Apple, a Human Failing

Steve Jobs would've admitted, I’m sure, that he was no saint. His tectonic success over the last decade of his life, notwithstanding, he would not call himself a categorical success. By many accounts, he was an ass to work for, to collaborate with, and certainly to manage. The first 10 years of Apple were as roller coaster-thrilling in broad daylight, as it was dark foreboding nightmare.

The revolutionary MacIntosh that Jobs and his renegade team worked on, in the early 1980s, led to a video which was of such Orwellian proportions that it took the public’s breath away.

There was one problem with the Mac: It was a commercial flop. The cult-like ad apparently didn’t translate to what mattered most to the Board: cold, hard cash. Robert Cringely said, Jobs “ran amok at Apple. He cost the company a lot of money. He was wasteful, self-indulgent, a brat."  In this scenario, I wouldn’t blame anyone on the Board for looking at him as a financial liability, let alone as immature and headstrong.  For sure, he deserved these characterizations. He was idealistic and perfectionistic, and clearly had flaws in his judgment. When he engineered a take-me-or-leave-me confrontation with then-CEO, John Sculley, much to his shock and chagrin, the Board chose the latter.

Have a look at the video that recounts all of this.

You see why I titled this article “Apple, a Human Failing.” Let’s step back, shall we, and reflect on this a bit.

No matter how visionary, how revolutionary, how standout of a leader all of us see Jobs, he was only human after all.  No different from the flesh-and-blood we all are.  No more gifted than any of us, for we are born with a brain to grasp things and with hands to get things done. And, for being quintessentially human, no less exempt from faults, errors, and shortcomings.  Let me make this clear: I am one of his most ardent fans. But I will say this, too: He himself had quite a bit to contribute to his ouster from Apple.  He needed to accept a good share of the responsibility for what happened in that fateful mid-1980s day at Apple.

The Board’s decision to oust him was, in retrospect, also a human failing. Michael Moritz said, “The knee-jerk reaction of conventional people is to elbow what they see as disruptive forces aside.”  We see this a lot, and we can see quite a bit of truth in it, don’t we. My thought, well, why not? Honestly, the last thing any of us need is something disruptive. Think about not just the esteemed Board of Directors, but also the employees at Apple. Like it or not, Jobs at that time must’ve represented a threat to all of their livelihoods, if the company were in fact to have sunk, post-Orwellian Mac. So it was easy enough, and even understandable, for Moritz to refer to those who dismissed Jobs as conventional people. But we are all conventionally human, after all, and that sort of elbowing seems to be part of our natural makeup.

Years later, Sculley admitted that the Board made a mistake in their decision. In the video interview above, he didn’t go so far as to say that they should’ve ousted him, instead. Still, he reasoned that with Jobs’ extraordinary talent, the Board should’ve found a way to work with him. If any of us truly had the gift of foresight and prophecy, we would’ve seen the bristling future talent of Jobs. If they had a crystal ball, the Board would’ve seen iTunes, iPhones and iPads dancing into view. So the next best thing in human affairs is to admit a mistake. You know what they say, To err is human; to forgive, divine.

But let me offer one more reflection:  Imagine that the Board had that proverbial crystal ball, and decided to keep Jobs onboard and to elevate him to CEO. From our vantage point in the present, spoiled now from the innovations that repeatedly came out of Apple coffers, we might have thought that that would’ve been the right decision. Me, well, I’d ask, How can we be so sure? It’s really not a simple thing to weigh. Press me, though, to offer a personal slant, and this is what I'd say. I think that Jobs needed much more time, and frankly a series of failures, in order to become what we saw of him over the last decade.  He needed 1985 – 2000 (15 long years, 25 years since the founding of Apple) to learn, to mature, to hone his considerable, unquestionable talent. In the end, I don’t think all of these cool gadgets that we now possess would’ve been iSuccesses in the 1980′s or 1990′s. So perhaps the irony of this is that the Board made the right decision at that time. Just perhaps.

I hope you see that this human failing is not really an indictment on any of us. Rather, it’s an acknowledgement of what we are all about and how complex and uncertain our affairs truly are. At least, in part. In a future article, I promise to write "Apple, a Human Triumph."  This, too, as we now know of Jobs and scores of others, is part of who we are.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD